Ive had several last days/episodes with my elderly aunt.
She is 83 now and I have looked after her as her carer for a long time.
At least 4 occasions it looked like she would not make it.
The second time was in 2015, she suddenly became very sleepy, very ill, she woke me up in
the middle of the night saying she needed the bathroom but she could not pass
anything.
That was the start of a 12 week nightmare, I called an ambulance they took her to
hospital where she just seemed to collapse. The doctors said she had kidney failure,
heart failure, her lungs were failing she could not breathe (later it turned out she
had severe undiagnosed COPD). Scans showed she had also had 2 mini stokes TIAs.
Also very high potassium levels, the doctor said he had never seen a living person
with potassium levels so high. (Potassium is what they use to stop the heart during
the lethal injections).
That first week she was barely conscious or aware of her surroundings, the heart
trace monitor was all over the place. For 4 days I was told to go home each evening
and they would ring me when she died in the night.
I prayed and prayed for her and so did a friend who visited. Then one night i had
a dream that a person was standing over my aunt by her bedside. He had long wavy
brown hair, I could not see his face as his head was bent low but he had a sort of
small metal cup with holes in the bottom. He was sprinkling her with something, then
I woke up.
The next day I had the idea of taking some oil in and anointing her with it, but I did
not know what to put it in. We had some specimen water sample bottles in the house,
the sort you take a water sample to the doctors in!
I poured some olive oil in one (it was unused!) and took it to the hospital.
Of course olive oil is yellow and I just hoped no-one would see and send me
to the funny farm thinking it was something else.
I prayed and dabbed the oil in her forehead it seemed the right thing to do.
Day 5 the consultant who said she would not survive, came to see us and was
very blustery and mumbled something about "oh she is still alive we had better move
her to the respiratory unit". His arrogance and poor communication skills were
appalling.
They moved her to the respiratory unit where she should have been all along, its one step
down from intensive case.
They put her on the full resus equipment including CPAP masks. After a few hours she
woke up. She was still very poorly and it took 12 weeks to get her back home with
oxygen equipment provided. We did not even know if she would be able to gain her
strength back and go home or whether she would end up bed bound needing 24/7 care.
She came home, walking, talking, laughing etc.
It was all God, but I believe the dream was also from God. Ive come to realise that
prayer opens doors, it enables God to act on our behalf it gives Him permission to
do what He wants to do. God will not force Himself onto us, prayer is a partnership
between God and us.
The moral is that you may not get time at all to speak to someone who is about to die,
they may be too far gone, unconscious etc. But it is never too later to stand in the gap
for them and bring them before God.
Even in that state God can and does still work miracles.
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